MARSH BIRDS. 85 



In his thick blue jersey and rough cloth breeches from year's 

 end to year's end, since it is impossible to notice the smallest 

 difference in their arrangement no matter what the weather, 

 or how unearthly the hour at which he plays chamber-maid. 

 The early morning when the shooter reaches the snug 

 coffee-room where the "neat-handed Phyllis" has already 

 lit a roaring fire with the ribs of some long-ago wrecked 

 vessel, and made preparations for breakfast is remarkably 

 cold, the windows are dimmed with frost along their lower 

 margins, and everything outside is silent, chill, and grey. 

 As far as the eye can see down the little village street 

 which ends in "the hard," and a muddy creek, whence 

 fishing-boats gain the open water of the tideway, no soul is 

 stirring the very boats are asleep, waiting for the water 

 and the tardy light to open in the east, Breakfast over, 

 the old sailor is followed down to the water's edge, where he 

 deposits his burden of guns, bags, and wraps under the 

 deck of a little craft that lies on her white-painted side just 

 awash of the tide. She is soon shoved afloat, and, with a 

 rag of a sail, goes creeping' down the creek, her skipper at 

 the helm, and the gunner forward, seeing all clear amongst 

 the stowage and lumber ere "going into action." 



It is still very early, and the sportsman feels much 

 inward pride at being* afoot so long before the world is 

 awake or many folk have shaken off their slumbers. He 

 may be conscious of a zero temperature about toes and 

 fingers, but he does not care for that. There is a prospect 

 of really good sport before him, for the mud flats are just 

 being uncovered by the still falling water, which leaves in 

 its rear wide stretches of ooze, rich in soft-shelled straddling 

 crabs, incautious flat-fish, and other marine delicacies, the 

 presence of which is tempting the sea-game down from the 

 marshes, where scores of them have been bickering and 

 whistling during the evening. 



If the shooter is of still hardier mould he will have 

 slept amongst these "noises of the darkness," and in spite 



